Game Wish 4: Systems

Game WISH from Turn of a Friendly Die

This is my first attempt at answering one of these; since I can't think of anything to say for the current WISH, so I'll try and answer an older one.

Describe three systems you have gamed under: one you thought was good, one you thought was all right, and one you didn't care for. What were the good points and the bad points of each system? Did the systems support their genre? Were they complex or simple? How easy were they to GM and play? Is there a system you'd really like to try that you haven't? Which ones wouldn't you try based on reading them?

Since so much of my gaming nowadays is either one-shot convention games, or internet-based PBeM/PBMB games, I tend to play a lot of different systems. System matters a lot less in on-line games, so I'll concentrate on the FtF games. I realise the last ten games I've played have all been for different systems, working backwards we have Blue Planet, In Nomine, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, 3rd Ed DnD, GURPS, Hero Wars, TORG, Fudge and Classic Traveller.

Good: GURPS
GURPS is unfairly maligned as an overcomplicated system that appeals only to anal-retentive simulationist gearheads, being too slow and cumbersome for most tastes. It's not true; while the system is detailed, and strives towards realism, it only becomes over-complicated if you insist on using every possible optional rule, something I've never done as a GM, and haven't seen done as a player. Most of the game's complexity is in character generation rather than game-play; once you've generated characters, the actual gameplay runs smoothly. I've played a lot of GURPS both as a GM and as a player, concentrating on low fantasy, realistic modern-day or hard SF, genres for which GURPS excels. To me, it's one of the few well-supported games that's optimised towards more realistic lower-powered characters rather than towards highly cinematic action heroes. I'm not bothered by the fact that it breaks down at high power levels and can't handle comic-book superheroes because I don't care much for those genres.

In the good category I'd also mention Fudge, which is ideal for story-centric rules-light gaming, and Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, the engine behind Runequest and Cthulhu, which has stood the test of time remarkably well.

All Right - d20
The best thing I can say about D&D 3rd Edition is that it's a big improvement on what went before; they've cleaned up a lot of the inconsistencies and dumped most of the sillier rules. Having played quite a lot of 1st and 2nd ed. DnD over the years, I find 3rd ed an awful lot smoother in play. However, it still includes the sacred cows of DnD such as classes and levels, and the hard-to-rationalise way it treats and armour and damage - Armour doesn't really represent armour, damage quite definitely doesn't represent damage, and to try and rationalise what healing spells do makes my brain hurt. However, it's a reasonable game at representing the tropes of heroic fantasy, though I don't think d20 really works as a generic multi-genre system.

Bad - Deadlands
I sometimes think the designers of Deadlands have tried as hard as possible to make a game which is the polar opposite of my own tastes. Having played it a couple of times under different GMs it's just about the only system I refuse to play any more because I can't stand the mechanics. I find the system of dice and playing cards and poker chips far too intrusive, the card-based initiative system is very slow and cumbersome, and the dice mechanic awful beyond description. It uses a Byzantine dice-pool mechanism using polyhedral dice which leaves the player with absolutely no clue what the character's actual abilities are. This may intentional in an attempt to frustrate min-maxers, in which case I must be a min-maxer because I found the system incredibly frustrating in play. Couple this with what I suspect to be far too high a chance of critical failures (although the impenetrability of the probabilities mean I have no idea if I just rolled badly, or the odds were stacked against me). I hate the way the number of actions per combat round is based on a roll using this idiotic dice mechanism, and the all-too-frequent critical failure means you end up sitting out the next hour while the other players have four or five actions.

There aren't many systems I'd really like to play but haven't, but there are quite a few systems I've played a couple of times but would like to play a bit more before judging them; Hero Wars is one example; a lot of intriguing ideas there, especially the very free-form magic system.